Conclusion: My take on the whole issue….According to me, in reference to Rushdie’s ban from the JLF, it is rather hard, even impossible to pinpoint who the troublemaker is. The Indian government, the certain Muslims who were ready to resolve to violence and thought of it as the right way to deal with the issue, and lastly Rushdie himself! I am sure that Rushdie, being a Muslim himself, was aware of how religiously protective and sensitive the Muslims were when he wrote his book. He may have just been making use of his right to free speech, but he should have restrained himself from stating things which some Muslims would clearly find derogatory, especially because it has to do with the revered Prophet. However, though he may have intentionally or unintentionally hurt some Muslims, the offended were equally wrong to have responded with threats and violence. The book was a case of mind over matter. If they hadn’t minded it wouldn’t have mattered. Response to what Rushdie wrote – or indeed to anything which you may find offensive – shouldn’t have been in the form of a fatwa, book-burning, attacks on publishers and translators, is not the disruption of a literary festival or banning the speaker or author from public discussion. The response to words should be words and words in the form of argument, not abuse. Rushdie should have been allowed to come to India and take part in the fest, where those who were hurt could have debated with him, heard both the sides of the argument, and put an end to the ancient controversy. Instead the government was threatened, riots broke out and many lives were put at risk. It also proved that the world’s largest democracy would succumb to intimidations for electoral reasons, setting the stage for further such terrorizations. And so, the Literature Fest, which hosted 250 other authors, was shrouded by the controversy surrounding a single writer, and a big outcry was raised that freedom of speech was imperilled by banning Rushdie....

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...Garima Verma
Prof. Karuna Rajeev
Anglo American Literature
24th October, 2013
The Rushdie Affair
More renowned for his controversies than his awards, Booker Prize winner, Sir Ahmed SalmanRushdie is a British Indian novelist and essayist. Though much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent a dominant theme of his work is the story of the many connections, disruptions and migrations between the Eastern and Western world. He is associated with the magical realism style of writing and has been often compared to the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, though he himself claims to have learned from the older tradition, from writers like Gogol or Dickens, “who have that ability to be on the edge between the surreal and the real.”
Born in a liberal westernized family, Rushdie never experienced the extreme religious fervor that orthodoxy inspires amongst followers. He had a Christian nurse, for whom his family celebrated Christmas, and his friends were from different religions, none of which “struck me as being particularly important.” (Rushdie: “In God We Trust” 376-377).
However, In “Why I Have Embraced Islam,” he goes on to say: “Although I come from a Muslim family background, I was not brought up as a believer, and was raised in an atmosphere of what is broadly known as secular humanism.” This ‘atmosphere’ can be understood to be a reference to Rushdie’s birthplace and childhood residence,...

...been persecuted in less enlightened times such as Mark Twain, and some have been ridiculed by the press like Edgar Allan Poe. Yet, SalmanRushdie was the first author in the free world to have been pursued from across continents and forced into hiding because of a death sentence by a foreign government. To say SalmanRushdie is a very controversial writer in today's society would be a gross understatement. Rushdie in fact could be considered the ideal poster boy for absolute freedom of the press. <br><br>It is not that Rushdie prides himself on being rebellious, he simply presents his ideas bluntly and it just so happens that his ideas address extremely volatile topics such as the Islam religion. Rushdie's philosophy was eloquently put when he wrote, "What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."<br><br>Contrary to many great authors, Rushdie did not endure a traumatic childhood, suffer from alcohol addiction, or live with chronic depression. Instead, Rushdie actually had what many would view as a close to perfect upbringing. Rushdie was born in 1947 to a middle-class Moslem family in the great city of Bombay, India. His paternal grandfather was an Urdu poet, and his father a Cambridge educated businessman. At the age of fourteen, Rushdie was...

...Freedom of Expression:
All people in the United States are guaranteed this right by the Constitution. Students, however, do not have this right to the same extent as adults. This is because public schools are required to protect all students at the school. The major aspects of this right are speech and dress. Both the right to speech and dress are not absolute in public high schools. According to the American Civil Liberties Union: "You (students) have a right to express your opinions as long as you do so in a way that doesn't 'materially and substantially' dirsupt classes or other school activities. If you hold a protest on the school steps and block the entrance to the building, school officials can stop you. They can probably also stop you from using language they think is 'vulgar or indecent'("Ask Sybil Libert" ACLU 1998). Public schools can also restrict student dress. In 1987 in Harper v. Edgewood Board of Education the court upheld "a dress regulation that required students to 'dress in conformity wit hthe accepted standards of the community'"(Whalen 72). This means that schools can restrict clothing with vulgarities and such, but they cannot restrict religious clothing: "School officials must accommodate
student's religious beliefs by permitting the wearing of religious clothing when such clothing must be worn during the school day as a part of the student's religious practice"(Whalen 78).
Back to Student Rights in Public High...

...FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
‘Freedom of expression’ is an amalgamation of several concepts and rights that includes freedom of speech and choice of what a person is allowed to say, do, hear, feel or express. If we break down the words and analyse them from their core, the simple meaning according to various dictionaries of freedom is ‘the power to determine action without restraint’ or ‘exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc’ this implies that freedom is liberty without constraints, whereas expression is nothing but the act of putting forth things in words or describing or expressing current emotions through multiple means at different levels, for example spiritual, mental, physical or social.
Since we are discussing ‘Freedom of expression’ in regard to social media and in specifics to social networking websites like Facebook and Wikileaks who assimilate multimillion threads of information and personal data every day, what they do with it and how it can affect various functional groups in the society like the (3 tier spread):
1. Government
2. Society
3. Corporations
Freedom of speech is not generally seen as an absolute right, but a prudential right. An absolute right is a right that cannot be interfered of overridden, no matter what the public interest in doing so may be. Keeping the...

...“RELIGION IS NOT A THREAT TO FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION”
Religion is like democracy: of the people for the people and by the people. If today the government is corrupt you cannot blame democracy for it. The same way if few materialistic minds are corrupting our religion, it is not religion which is to be blamed; it is those people who do this.
Good morning to the esteemed house.
“Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant.”
To those who argue that religion is a source of great evil, I would ask them to turn the coin over and examine the other side very closely. What is religion?? Our beliefs, our practices, something that defines our attitude, our principles, our faith and in short, a way of expressing ourselves, isn’t it? Religion, like poetry, is not a mere idea, it is expression. It is just few people who compromised our freedom for their own material gains doing all this, as they say, “in the name of religion”.
Aren’t we forgetting that it is freedom when we bow in our mosque, prostrate in our temple or kneel in the church? It is freedom when we express our happiness by celebrating Diwali, when we sing hymns praising Jesus. What of the order of nuns established to care for the dying or educate young girls? What of the soup kitchens and orphanages? What of the preservation of classic culture? What of the artistic and literary treasures? What of the hospitals? Have they been...

...Midnight’s Children is Salman Rushdie’s most highly regarded work of fiction. Rushdie was born on June 19, 1947, and his birth occurred simultaneously with a particularly meaningful moment in Indian history. After almost one hundred years of colonial rule, the British occupation of India was coming to an end. Almost exactly three months after Rushdie’s birth, India gained its long-awaited independence at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947. Just asRushdie was born during a revolutionary time period in Indian history, Saleem Sinai, the narrator and protagonist of the novel, is born at midnight, August 15, 1947, at the exact moment India achieved its independence from British rule. Now nearing his thirty-first birthday, Saleem believes that his body is beginning to crack and fall apart. Fearing his impending death, he grows anxious to tell his life story. Throughout the novel, Saleem, in the process of his search for self-definition, attempts to solve the puzzles of his own identity. From the moment that he is born, his life is inextricably linked to the progress of Indian as a nation, and Rushdie explores the dichotomy between the single and the many in order to define the identity of his characters. Furthermore, the physical and emotional fragmentation that Saleem experiences hinders his ability to determine his true identity. Saleem’s continuous efforts to make meaning of his life illustrate the imperfections...